Feast Your Eyes on These Iconic Pueblo Dishes

If you're looking for places to eat in Pueblo, make sure the restaurants or bars have one of these must-try local favorites on the menu.

By Amy Antonation on April 25, 2024

Ryan Dearth

Food is unique in Pueblo, says Haley Sue Robinson, a native of Pueblo and the city’s director of public affairs. “It’s because of our people,” Robinson says, citing the influx of Slovenians, Italians, Mexicans and Germans who arrived in the city to work in its steel mill, as well as the persistence of family-owned eateries in the face of franchises and chain restaurants. 

Pueblo has those, too, she says, but “we’ve still maintained some pretty cool familial roots. … We have those small mom-and-pop food places that exist in smaller towns.” 

If you are looking for great places to eat in Pueblo, be sure to get acquainted with its iconic dishes that are known statewide – and even nationwide. Here are three of the most famous Pueblo dishes, as well as the stories behind them. 

Ryan Dearth

The Slopper 

The single dish most associated with Pueblo has to be the Slopper, an open-faced burger smothered in green chile. (A foundational concept for those unfamiliar with Colorado culinary culture: Pueblo is renowned for its green chile – both the hot pepper itself and a pork-studded stew made with the spicy pod). 

Gray’s Coors Tavern, a historic bar popular among residents, is one of two spots in town most commonly credited with the dish’s creation. “In 1950, Herb Casebeer came into the bar, asked for a burger covered in chile and said, ‘We call it a Slopper at my house,’” says co-owner Carrie Fetty, whose family has owned the bar since 1983. 

At that time, she says, the kitchen served it with red chile; it didn’t start slathering the dish in green chile until sometime in the 1980s. 

Gray’s Slopper consists of two beef patties, each resting on a bottom bun, onion and cheese, all covered in chile. “Most people do green,” she says, “but a lot of people do red, and some do Christmas (both red and green chiles). We can add eggs, bacon, whatever you want.” 

She recalls a famished hiker who had just come off a mountain: “He ordered 12 patties and ate the whole thing – and did not die.”

Pass Key Restaurant

The Pass Key Special 

Speaking of great places to eat in Pueblo, the Pass Key Restaurant serves all manner of burgers, hot dogs and fried snacks, but its claim to fame for over 70 years has been the Pass Key Special sausage sandwich. 

“It’s synonymous with Pueblo and with us,” says Luke Fleckenstein, owner of one of three Pass Key outposts in town. 

Fleckenstein is the grandson of John Pagano, who, with brother Frank, purchased Pass Key Drive-In from his aunt and uncle in 1952 and expanded it to its current three restaurants. John created the Pass Key Special: two square, spicy Italian sausage patties on a bun, topped with mustard, lettuce and American, Swiss or provolone cheese. 

“We use the same butcher, Frank’s Meat Market, and the same baker, Shusters, my grandpa started with,” Fleckenstein says. “Both are multigenerational businesses, as is ours.” 

While those suppliers haven’t changed, the Pass Key Special has naturally evolved over the years. Diners can add a strip of Pueblo green chile to their sandwich or get the Super Pass Key, which is loaded with all three cheeses. 

Each shop goes through 1,200 pounds of pork per week to satisfy the Special’s many fans, who come from as far as New York and Minnesota.

When the original location shuttered its doors in 2022, “people were calling from all over the country thinking all of our locations were closing and asking, ‘Can you send us some sausage?’” Fleckenstein says. “I called it ‘Pass Key pandemonium.’”

Ryan Dearth

The Sweet Crust Pizza

Do Drop Inn owner Donna MacFarlane’s unusual pizza crust recipe was born of necessity: In 1977, MacFarlane and her then-husband were in the process of purchasing a bar in downtown Pueblo. The space was home to a well-established spot that sold pizza, “but at the last minute, they decided not to sell us their pizza recipes,” MacFarlane says. 

She recalled a classmate at the girls’ Catholic high school she attended who had once baked sweet bread for communion. “I thought, ‘I love this. If I make bread, I want to make it like this,’” she says. 

So, she developed a crust recipe that incorporated a bit of sweetness; the result was a medium-sweet, thick crust. 

The pizza was a hit right away, thanks in large part to word of mouth. “It was pretty quick,” MacFarlane says of its success. “At that time in 1977, there were no chain restaurants here. It was all hometown restaurants, so people were really interested in every good restaurant in town.”

Over the years, Do Drop Inn relocated to a bigger space, opened a second location and expanded the menu to include breakfast. Now, its best-selling pizza is the Combination, topped with Italian sausage, pepperoni, bell peppers and mushrooms, but other popular choices are the Avondale (alfredo sauce, roasted Pueblo chiles and pico de gallo) and Pueblo’s Favorite (Pueblo chiles, beef, tomatoes and onions).